when hormones attack

There’s this thing that happens, every 28 days or so, when my hormones kick in to high gear and I nest, rather maniacally. I start giant cleaning and organizing projects, or I cook endlessly. Sometimes it lasts for just for a few hours, or an afternoon, but this month, it’s been a full two days, with no end in sight.

This weekend’s been productive, to put it mildly.

I hauled out my KitchenAid mixer.

I made cookies, and baked bread.

I made pizza dough, and assembled two cute little pizzas for dinner. Here they are before baking:

The one on the right is mushroom, red pepper, onion, sundried tomato, anchovy, and parmesan. The one on the left is ricotta cheese, fresh peach, and black pepper — topped with prosciutto once it came out of the oven.

I polished my silver jewelry, hung some art, cleaned my bathroom, did laundry, went grocery shopping… you get the idea.

Then this morning, my friend S. came over for brunch. I decided to treat her to stuffed French toast, using the bread I made yesterday. I mixed together some ricotta cheese and apricot jam with a few dashes of ground cardamom and cinnamon. Then I played surgeon and cut a pocket into the side of a really thick slice of bread, and stuffed in the cheesy apricot-y goodness. The slices got dipped in a standard French toast mixture (eggs and milk plus a bit of vanilla) and fried in some butter.

Here’s what they look like when you cut them open.

Served with some fruit salad, maple syrup, and coffee, we had ourselves a damn sweet brunch. Yes, literally.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get my calzoni out of the oven.

Saturday night treat

Yep, a special dinner, just for me.

This afternoon I went out wandering in search of a bit of exercise and some groceries. I hit up a few organic markets near my apartment, and eventually meandered over to my favourite Italian grocery store. Where I scored this lovely veal chop:

I decided to cook it really simply, inspired by Mark Bittman. I rubbed it with a halved clove of garlic and a bit of olive oil, then sprinkled it with some dried rosemary (I didn’t have any fresh, but the dried stuff is from my mom’s garden, at least), salt and pepper. I broiled it for about 4 minutes each side, in my trusty little cast-iron pan. The fat on the edges browned and crisped beautifully.

I served it with roasted white and sweet potatoes (tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper) and a beet salad. I found some beets in the freezer from last August — definitely time to eat them. I made a vinaigrette with some olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, and salt and pepper, and tossed in the beets while the potatoes were cooking, so they’d absorb a bit of flavour. Then to serve, I topped them with some nice chunks of feta cheese and some candied walnuts I’d made while ago that were languishing in my fridge.

Behold!

Oh, and I can’t forget my pre-dinner drink:

That’s a cucumber gin and tonic. I’d been planning to make a much more complicated drink involving rose syrup and soda, but when I reached into the fridge for the can of club soda I was sure I had in there… yeah, you guessed it. No club soda. So I just added some gin and tonic water to the cucumber I’d already muddled. It sure was tasty.

The end.